President Donald Trump signed a major Dodd-Frank rollback into law Thursday, hoping to bring regulatory relief to community banks across the U.S. The president explained Dodd-Frank’s costly regulations gave large banks a negative advantage at the cost of small banks throughout the country. Click the headline to read more.

Items Tagged with 'Ponzi scheme'

ARTICLES

The former owner of an Oregon investment firm convinced senior citizens to invest in rehabilitating Portland-area houses, but actually misappropriated their money to pay earlier investors and took more than $500,000 of the funds for himself, the Department of Justice claims.

A California man admitted in court this week that he ran a massive real estate Ponzi scheme and defrauded investors out of $24 million by falsely promising that he planned to use their money to purchase residential properties and either manage the properties for rental income or flip the properties and resell them for a profit.

Late last week, the SEC sued Robert Shapiro, the founder of the Woodbridge group of companies and a well-known luxury real estate developer, for allegedly running a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme that defrauded more than 8,400 investors by promising high returns on real estate investments.

A California man stands accused of bilking investors out of $20 million by running a real estate Ponzi scheme. According to court documents, Seth Depiano operated a Ponzi scheme that attracted real estate investors and convince them to give to him and the businesses he controlled, which included The Rental Group, U.S. Funding and Home Services, and Draymond Homes, more than $20 million.

The former owner of a “We Buy Ugly Houses” franchise admitted in federal court recently that she mislead investors, misused investors’ money, forged investors’ signatures on deeds, and ran what amounted to a real estate Ponzi scheme.

A North Texas man who raised nearly $23 million from investors under the guise of investing in the mortgage business actually used some of the money for his own personal use, while funneling money to a supposed concert promoter who claims to represent Taylor Swift and Drake, the Securities and Exchange Commission said this week.

A Delaware mortgage loan officer ran a Ponzi scheme that bilked more than $1.69 million out of investors who thought they were investing in a “highly successful” mortgage business, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Delaware Department of Justice claim in new legal filings.

Scammer allegedly didn’t tell investors that, in fact, the properties offered as collateral were often not owned by him, were substantially encumbered, or were in uninhabitable or blighted condition, the SEC said back in January. Now, he's landed in front of a federal grand jury.

A pair of brothers promised "guaranteed monthly income" to senior citizens in exchange for investing in real estate, but instead of providing the approximately 30 "elderly and unsophisticated" investors with returns on their investments, Matthew and Daniel Rivera pocketed the investors’ money and used some it to pay back other investors. This is how the SEC claims it went down.

After the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided residential finance and investment firm United Development Funding, executives were reportedly served grand jury subpoenas to provide documents related to the operations of the firm.

This month inHousingWire magazine

He wears t-shirts to his televised interviews; not very CEO. He played sports at a high level, but rarely brings it up and when he does he talks about it as a mere chapter in his life. Honestly, who plays a Super Bowl and doesn’t describe it as the defining moment in their personal journey? Casey Crawford, that’s who. His family is a big part of his life of course, but he talks about his even larger family — his coworkers — in terms that are just as glowing.

Feature

One of the things that has bedeviled mortgage financing post-crisis has been the absence of the private label mortgage backed securities market. During the peak years, private label MBS issuance topped $1 trillion. In 2017, only $70 billion of private label RMBS were issued, although that is a big increase from 2016.

Commentary

Digital technology has disrupted businesses and industries from publishing to public transportation, so can the mortgage industry be far behind? Actually, anyone who’s applied for a mortgage recently will have recognized that things are already changing fast.